A glimpse of Stockton's bawdy past from a poker chip? — you bet

This is a story about how a poker chip became a window into Stockton's inimitably checkered past.

Michael Fitzgerald

This is a story about how a poker chip became a window into Stockton's inimitably checkered past.

Larry Valterza collects poker chips. On Monday, he attended a chip club meeting in Sacramento. A bunch of collectors were there, buying, selling and swapping.

"There are two things chip collectors are looking for," Valterza wrote me. "(1) chips from known clubs and (2) chips we have that we do not know where they came from - 'UFOs.' "

A Nevada collector was looking to unload California UFOs. The chips bore the initials "LP" stamped into one side. Valterza bought a few.

Most experts present could not ID the chips. No reference book listed their provenance. But one dealer had manufacturer's records stored in his iPhone.

"In about a minute," Valterza recounted, "he tells me that the LP chip is from Stockton and was delivered July 13, 1949, to Lino Panelli at 14 East Market St., Stockton."

LP ... Lino Panelli.

The year 1949, the address on the first block of East Market - once Stockton's notorious West End skid row - and the poker paraphernalia suggest we're about to step back to a very different time.

A time when downtown Stockton was a thriving city center with a sort of miniature and illegal Las Vegas hidden within.

Its feverish underground was "wide open" with gambling, narcotics and prostitution. And Lord knows what else.

Valterza burrowed through a 1949 Stockton directory, and local death records, to learn more provenance. And also perhaps to find living descendants from whom he might acquire more chips to round out his set.

Using the reverse part of the directory, Valterza learned the establishment at 14-16 E. Market was called Lino's Club. It all fit together.

Lino and Jennie had no children. But both were part of big clans. Many people fondly remember Jennie's sister, for instance, Enice "Mama" Simoni, who ran the popular Simoni's Italian Café for 51 years (and died in 2004).

The recent obit led Valterza to Salvetti Panelli's niece, retiree Julie Stephens of Stockton. Stephens took care of Jennie in her declining years She knows the scoop about Lino's Club.

Lino Panelli was a colorful man, a George Raft look-alike, short at maybe 5 foot 1. He could be funny or hotheaded, Stephens said.

"He was a little kingpin," Stephens said.

Jennie Salvetti Panelli was a red-headed spitfire, a tough gal, though a couple inches shorter than Lino, even.

"She was a wild one," Stephens said. "It wouldn't take her two seconds to tell you what she thought of you."

At Lino's, customers packed the bar three deep. A big orange-striped bar cat was famous for walking down the bar-top and pawing customers' loose change off the bar and onto Lino's side of the floor.

"After that, Lino would pick it up and it was his," Stephens recalled.

The back room featured the gambling. Upstairs was a bordello. The girls used to saunter down to socialize and solicit business. That steamed Jennie Panelli.

"They'd get in a fight and she'd steal money from his wallet and go buy shoes," Stephens recalled.

Business was good. "My dad said my uncle was just raking the money in," Stephens said.

There's more. Probably a whole extravaganza. "There's other stories. I can't tell," Stephens said warily. "If that ever came out, I'd really be in trouble."

All this may sound outrageous. But Stockton operated like this for half a century. It's a different town now. Ironically, the police station now stands where Lino's Club once did. Has anybody checked the basement to see if there's still a poker game going on down there?

Valterza is happy with his find. "It is not just buying chips and stuffing them in a binder," he wrote me. "It is a way of knitting history together."

Lino died in 1969. At his funeral, Jennie had to be restrained when a hooker bent over his casket and kissed him on the forehead.

Jennie Salvetti Panelli passed away on Dec. 3, 2012 - four months ago - at the age of 97. In her later years, she worked with her sister at Simoni's. Maybe she served you polenta.